Lärande och skolutveckling : Ledarskap för demokrati och meningsskapande

The concept of school development refers to conscious changes taking place on a separate school and encompasses the whole or at least a greater part of the school. The focus of school development is to enhance the quality in the learning processes of the pupils. Local and central authorities have a great confidence in objectives, plans and evaluations in school development. Teachers’ and school leaders’ conceptions of what determines the process of school development have little in common with the conceptions expressed by central authorities. School development from an actor perspective is about finding solutions on problems they encounter in the everyday teaching situation. The aim of the research project was to get a more profound understanding of the school development process. School leaders seem 2004 to a greater extent understand the organisation as an arena for sense making and mutual deep learning than as an arena of instrumental actions in accordance with management by objectives and results with focus on work plans within top-down formulated delimited objectives. Teachers emphasize the importance of clarity with the pedagogical vision of the school and that it is important that school leaders both have a good knowledge and a deep understanding of the everyday life at the school. To be able to build up a deeper understanding of the daily pedagogical work at the school a school leader needs to understand the frames of reference of the teachers, that are the sensemaking conceptions that compose the whole from which teachers understand and handle the different daily situations they encounter. In problem based school development sense making learning processes are organised in which pupils, teachers and school leaders can deepen their understanding about problems that are found to be important. In a learning oriented school the learning competences are being strengthened so that the pedagogical work builds on more fundamental knowledge that comes out of the learning processes. The basis for the analysis consists of individual interviews with school leaders and teachers, surveys to teachers and school leaders and observations of teacher teams, school governing bodies and lessons